Technology

one problem...

Might be more difficult than that. I'm in the hunt for a new work truck, a ram 2500. I'm specifically targeting a 2019-2020, because the 4G cellular module is easily removed, whereas in newer models it is soldered directly to a main telematics board and is pretty tricky to remove.

These companies don't want you removing these systems in their current state, as they're harvesting your data and selling it off as another revenue stream. I suspect these future monitoring systems, if removed, will brick the vehicle in one way or another.

Someone linked a nice explainer on the topic in this thread, but my takeaway was that this is unlikely to ever exist

TLDR of the TLDR (which I recommend reading)

• the regulatory body is super slow, and won't approve a change unless all the ducks are in a row

• there's no safe way to stop or disable a car while it's moving, so the regulatory body won't approve it anytime soon

It will go in the scrap bin right next to the OnStar module.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

They can be a source of egregious right wing propaganda undermining our democracy at every turn (which they are), and also occasionally still have legitimate grievances with our legislators sneaking bullshit like this into otherwise critical legislation.

If the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was signed on Nov 15th, 2021 becomes law?

I would say this is another brick in the argument for an open source car operating system

...Go analog with a carb, maybe? Only thing that can stop a carb from working is it being out of gas. Or changing altitude. Or bad fuel. Or it's too cold and/or hot. ... OK lots of things can stop carbs, but the government sure can't, at least.

Jailbreaking cars will be the new software development in piracy. Just wait for someone to figure out a way to permanently disable this entire system.

No such thing as a secure backdoor

Looking at the other articles on the site, I count one antivaxx and another that claims the newly elected fascist in Argentina is a "Libertarian".

Thanks for linking to a sane review.

I think the analysis is correct in that the implementation will die in committee before ever making it to effect, not to mention the practical considerations of implementing this in the lighting-fast timeframe of 3 years. However, I cannot help but point out this part:

So far, not a kill switch, but some kind of technology to detect if you’re driving like a drunk person and disable the vehicle.

"Disable the vehicle" is literally what people mean when they talk about a "kill switch". At best that's an argument over semantics. The law mandates a thing that deliberately stop your car from functioning. That's a kill switch.

It's not a lie. There's no malicious intent. It's just not even wrong. It so fundamentally lacks understanding of the underlying bureaucracy, technology, product lifecycle, and surrounding politics politics that it amounts to nothing.

And the overall point still stands. We should be skeptical of these kinds of intrusions into our devices from the state. We should resist them as a default posture.